Citizen Action organized a panel discussion last night about the problem of persistent gang violence in some urban areas — like Albany — including Albany Common Councilwoman Barbara Smith, activist Brother Yusuf Burgess and Sen. Eric Schneiderman, one of five Democrats running for attorney general.

Traditionally, the problem of urban violence have been below the purview of the attorney general, who is tasked with defending the state against law suits and otherwise serving as its chief legal officer. But this “is something that, as attorney general, I’m committed to spending more of the time and resources of the office focusing on justice, and focusing on the justice system,” Schneiderman said. “You get to have some priority setting in the office, and Eliot Spitzer famously decided to focus on Wall Street. I have a few priorities myself, and this is one of them. This is something that you can’t have a successful state where people don’t have confidence in the justice system.”

Schneiderman touted his bona fides as a progressive on criminal justice, including his work to roll back sentences for drug dealers and, in 2009, to further restructure sentencing to allow judges more discretion in sentencing low-level, non-violent drug offenders to treatment rather than jail. That measure has been criticized by Republicans as the “drug dealer protection act.”

The appearance, as well as a television ad released today, show Schneiderman tacking unabashedly left. He has long had a platform of promoting a “smart on crime” approach which includes creating an Actual Innocence Office within the criminal division, as well as cracking down more extensively on illegal guns. Schneiderman sponsored a bill requiring handguns to microstamp bullets — it failed in the Senate — and has been endorsed by the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

But for the first time that I can remember, Schneiderman is waving his positions here like a flag, the proud progressive (or, spinning the other way, the crazy lefty) who has heard the cries of inner city despair as he travels around the state for his campaign.

Throughout the forum, Schneiderman decried “the failed experiment” of “mass-incarceration” — some 2.3 million prisoners nationwide. He wants to “re-orient” spending and that it’s a “big lie, that to be safe you have to run and engage in the mass-incarceration of young men of color.”

“That’s a lot of money, to keep 2.3 million people in prison, and you can buy a lot of treatment, and you can buy a lot of re-entry programs, and again, it was very inspiring to me to be on the sentencing commission and see how many programs demonstrate success in other states, in other jurisdictions, we’ve just got to invest in them,” he said.

He pointed to the $4 million SNUG program passed last year by the Senate, which appropriated $500,000 for Albany, as an example of success. But after the event, I asked how he could carry out his platform given the massive deficits the state faces, and given the fact that, as attorney general, he has no formal role in the budget process. Much less than he had as a legislator.

“Pretty much every thing we need to do to re-orient the system, move away from the failed policies of the past toward things we know are effective at preventing crime and making us safer are revenue neutral. You know, this is something we have to recognize…look: we’re bringing the prison population down, nothing more expensive than locking someone up in a maximum security cell,” Schneiderman replied, at times preventing himself from finishing his own sentences. “So I don’t think that this is something that in the long-run requires more resources. It does require a smarter use of our resources. Look: the things we were talking about tonight are, this is where we have to end up. You know, you can’t have a government that operates on the basis of, we know things work and we don’t invest in them, we know things that don’t work and yet we spend money on them. So I don’t think this is going to cost money, I think it’s more about a re-orientation of our reactors in government and also a re-orientation of the public. We have to just get everyone clear on what works in terms of criminal justice policy.”

“We spend money in every part of the system. Every person who comes through the door costs us a lot of money. They come in, you arrest them, it’s police time, it’s time in the jails, it’s time in the courts, so having a system like drug courts saves us money,” he said. “This is all revenue neutral. There’s some small investments required at the outset, but frankly this is a good use of federal funds, and I’m not saying we can do this overnight.”

I asked about how he could advocate for this as AG.

“I think I’m a pretty effective advocate and I look forward to pressing the legislature, and I know how to get stuff done in this town — it’s not easy, but I know how to do it,” Schneiderman replied. “You have to build a campaign outside, or organizations, editorial boards, active citizens, to pressure the legislature to do the right thing. This is what we do.”

“I expect to be very effective as the top lawyer in the state in advocating for an effective system of justice, and I will be fighting with everyone else for resources, I know, but it’s better at least to have the right vision of where to go and start the fight for resources,” he continued. “The hard time won’t last forever.”

I also questioned Schneiderman’s approach, and the belief from some political observers — including Democrats — that these stances will make Schneiderman seem soft-on-crime and possibly hurt him in a general election, were he to win the primary. The Republican candidate for the office is Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan. Operation SNUG, for example, has been attacked for hiring ex-offenders as counselors.

“I look forward to the matchup against Dan Donovan, who I know very well. He lobbied hard when he was the head of the DA’s association and was opposing the Rockefeller drug reforms that I was sponsoring,” Schneiderman said. “Look: he’s just someone who is a good guy but an example of the old way of thinking, and it’s not solving our problems. The old ways of thinking about the justice system are not going to solve our problems, and I think the public wants new directions, they want reform, they want change I think I can make that case very effectively.”

“And none of this is about being soft on crime,” he continued. “It’s, I support tougher sentencing in a variety of issues. Drug kingpins, the human trafficking bill I was very much a part of getting passed, I’ve been doing lots of work on domestic violence, work on, you know, obviously the distinction between drug kingpins and low-level dealers we made, and obviously increased the penalties for kingpins in the Rockefeller reform. So I have a very realistic view of this. I spent two years working in a jail — I have a good sense of what criminals are like, and some folks are just criminals. That doesn’t mean we should be stupid about crime. It doesn’t mean we should, you know, I think people want someone who’s honest with them, and want someone who has the vision and the will to bring about reforms.”

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